


December Abridged

by CrumblingAsh



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Bruce Angst, Bruce Needs a Hug, Bruce is from 1918, Graphic Description, Human Tony, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Suicide Attempt, Tony Being Tony, Tony Needs a Hug, Vampire Bruce, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-08 00:15:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5475851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrumblingAsh/pseuds/CrumblingAsh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce has counted the time in seasons, in his failed attempts to die, in the number of wars and not-wars that have come and never gone. He had once counted it in death, in the screams of the people he had ended instead of helped - but the screams are no longer discernible from the sounds of his breathing, and death is never-ending, and it's become easier to judge by the fall of the snow than to sit and try to untangle himself to find the years he's spent alive.</p>
<p>Every three nights, Bruce crowds a shadow of a human with a heartbeat into an alley, one as insignificant and heavy as he is, and when he bites them, their white-noise screams as he drains their blood into his mouth almost sound like a thank-you.</p>
<p>He never expected that one day someone would bite him back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	December Abridged

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChibiYoda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiYoda/gifts).



* * *

 

 

_His birthday was still two and a half months away when Captain America’s USO Tour stopped miles from where he worked._

_There wouldn’t be another stop close for the rest of the year._

_In a time of War and widows and orphans and death that arrived on the heels of air raid sirens, all he wanted was to see the man from the Captain America films – grab an autograph, maybe even a photo. It was selfish. But he was tired of not being selfish._

_All Bruce remembered of the show was being surprised at how, up close, the Captain’s pupils had been surrounded by a thick red circle inside of the blue. Red, white, and blue eyes._

 

* * *

 

 

If you kill them first, it doesn’t feel as good. No matter how quick you are, no matter if the pulse is still fading or if the arms are still trembling or if the blood is still warm – if they die before you’ve started, or die before you’re done, it doesn’t feel as good.

It doesn’t work as well, either.

(Maybe that’s when he had started to slip – when he’d chosen to take the full rush of living over giving the simple gift of mercy)

Before, somewhere shortly after the horror of the beginning, Bruce had cried while stealing the life of another for his, had tongued his pleas for forgiveness against the thick veins of their necks because he hadn’t been able to spare a breath to whisper the words. He’d cried, and they had cried, and if he had known that they had had no one left in the world to mourn or care of their lifeless body, he had buried them in simply marked graves in whatever peaceful patch of land had been around. Simple to do in a national depression – in a world on the brink of war with itself. He’d cried, from the start of their struggle to their burial.

(He doesn’t cry anymore, his tears lost to repetition and failure and _lack._ With this new century and its surveillance and records and Missing Person cases, he doesn’t so often bury them anymore, either. Maybe that’s when he had started to slip – when he’d left the first drained body where it had fallen – or maybe it’s just an aftershock of what he’s become)

_‘I’m sorry,’_ he thinks to the woman he has pinned up against the chipping cement wall of a long-abandoned bookshop. She’s screaming, of course, and he can feel it against the palms of his hands as he holds her immobile - but earlier, before he’d approached her, she’d been silent, vacant, staring off into an abyss he himself had stood on the edge of time and again. Her blood flows into his mouth through the punctures of his teeth, down his throat and feeding his starving body, instead of flowing freely on the cold needless ground, the way it would have, had she used the gun in her pocket. He tells himself that he’s doing her a favor this way, killing her instead of her killing herself – if she has children, or a family of any sort, it will be kinder to them to see her murdered instead of thinking she had given up on them. If she doesn’t, the city will care more about her as a victim than it would have as just another person who had lost the inner fight. A suicide is an inconvenience, a mess someone else has to take the time to clean up. A murder is an attack on innocence, something to avenge.

Bruce tells himself this – he _always_ tells himself this – but he’d stopped believing in it years ago.

The hum of her screams begins to fade, and in his arms her body begins to slacken and grow heavy. Her blood is still rich in his mouth, hot and filling, but it’s becoming tinged with the bitterness of death, like a drink not mixed all the way and nearing the bottom of the glass, and-

He lets her drop, the thud of her crumpled body hitting the ground cutting through the roaring white noise in his ears. He doesn’t look down at her – her eyes, whatever color they are, will be accusing, her body will be twitching in helpless spasms as she tries to reach out for help that isn’t there – he doesn’t look down at her, lets what is left of her life fade away from the wound on her neck, the suffocation of her organs, her own lack of will to live.

(This. _This_ could be where – if you kill them first, the blood is tainted, only does half of the work and leaves you twice as hungry, makes the darker half of your mind harder to control. If you keep feeding after they’re dead, it works backwards, the dead blood eating away at what you’ve already consumed – eating away at you. He’s tried – _fuck, has he tried –_ but it’s inescapable. You kill them, but they die on their own. Without you. Without anyone).

He doesn’t look at her, but he feels her watching him as he kneels down to pick up the gun she had been carrying. It’s old, poorly taken care of and bitten with rust, but it’s warm in his hand from the old heat of her body.

Fresh life is twisting around violently in his gut, now, and she probably thinks he’ll use the gun on her – he could, end this quickly. He can’t. He doesn’t. He’s drawn a line, between murder for need and murder for murder, and he’s only ever crossed it once. He gives himself that much, even if he doesn’t deserve an inch of it.

He pockets her gun, licks her blood from his lips (don’t waste it), turns his back on her trembling, outstretched hands, and walks away from her final breath.

 

* * *

 

 

_The first person he killed was a man. Just a man, hardworking and wearing his weariness of the times on his face, who was just trying to do a good thing._

_Bruce was prone on the ground, his ears pressured and ringing, his mouth burning and aching and needing s **omething** that he couldn’t name but so distantly knew the taste of. It was his birthday – or it had been, or … no, it wasn’t, but he had been celebrating it. There was sun just barely in the sky now, and the Captain America show was long gone – and he was pressed into the dirt half-underneath the stage. _

_(Large, gentle hands. “Oh my God, oh my God, I- Jesus Christ. What did I-? I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-!”)_

_Cold fingers pressed timidly against his shoulder. “Son?” A man’s voice, old. A little frail. “Son, you alright? You drunk?” Another careful poke. “Need some help?”_

_There had been so little kindness in Bruce’s life. Very few people who had ever wanted to be nice to him. He blinked again and focused – the man above him was dressed in work-stains and exhaustion, economic collapse eating at his bones but with eyes that edged concern._

_“Son?” The man asked again, leaning in. “The Captain America show’s over – man’s gone off to his next stop. … Son?”_

_Bruce didn’t mean to. His head spun with confused pain, but the kind man was closer, exuding an intoxicating scent, and Bruce had been hungry for real food for weeks, and was **starving** for something elsenow. Without thinking of it, he lunged._

_The man’s scream was already weak when Bruce’s mouth latched onto his neck, his teeth (sharp) slicing through skin. The blood, hot and thick, was more filling than any meal he had ever dreamt of having._

_He had never felt someone die before._

* * *

 

Bruce has tried to kill himself one hundred and eighty-two times.

In a crevice under an abandoned bridge in a city America’s dream has forgotten, he examines his stolen gun in the morning sun’s beaming glow. It’s small, neglected – utterly insignificant apart from the bullets in its belly. Its fragile trigger quivers threateningly under the caress of his exploring finger, as if its promise could be any more dangerous than he already is.

He’s walked in front of speeding cars. Slammed his head repeatedly into brick walls. Sliced open his own wrists with vertical lines in an attempt to be either symbolic or ironic. Twice, he’s chained himself to frighteningly heavy rocks and thrown himself over bridges to sink and drown. He’s skipped off rooftops, tied rope around his neck and tipped over a chair, swallowed poison and drank down handfuls of pills. One particularly dreadful Valentine’s Day in nineteen eighty-two, he’d even laid himself out across a narrow train track, abdomen so optimistically exposed, and waited for the unknowing locomotive.

(It had hit him, and the train had crashed)

Of those one hundred and eighty-two times, eighty-five of them had belonged to a bullet fired from a gun – at his temple, down his throat, straight to his twice-damned heart that doesn’t even beat. Again and again and again and again-

_‘Eh. What the hell – why not?’_

He fires this one four times in succession, directly into his right eye.

His vision goes white – his ears sing – a tsunami of a headache crashes through his head, lashing out and volatile. His heart hasn’t taken a beat in sixty-seven years, but for a few blessedly hopeful seconds, his lungs stop working, too.

(It’s not that Bruce misses what they now call “The Roaring Twenties” – he doesn’t particularly miss the mess of the nineteen thirties, either, and the forties had really belonged to the Second War. It’s not that he misses the peeling paint of his apartment or the mold that had been growing along his windows, or the way Doris Cooper from down the block had made his stomach flip (or the way her older brother Joseph had, too). He doesn’t miss the constant sadness, the smell of unwashed skin, the taste of unfiltered exhaust, or the endless hours of work required just to earn enough for rent. This new century has its flaws, its own swirl of hopelessness and fear, but its infinitesimally more appealing than what his life has left behind him. No, it’s not that he misses _anything,_ really, it’s just-)

The twitch of a nerve makes him blink, and everything is back in color. He’s under the bridge, the old gun in his hand – four smashed bullets glittering at his feet. His chest shifts as if his uninjured bones need to reform, and he breathes again.

“Yeah, well,” he says to the gun, his voice raspy from lack of use. “Fuck you, too, buddy.” And chucks it hard into what’s left of the river the old bridge crosses. It plunks. He doesn’t care. Just gives the ruined bullets a little kick so that he doesn’t have to see them anymore.

One hundred and eighty-three, though he’s not entirely convinced that that one can count if he hadn’t exactly expected it to work.

He falls to his butt on the dirt-scattered pavement, leans back against the bottom of the bridge and stares out at the river. It’ll probably dry up in a few years … five, if it’s lucky. Probably three. It’s polluted waters hadn’t been what had driven most of the population away, but the population that had left had probably been what had polluted it.

The sun still sparkles off of it, though. All these decades, and that still looks the same.

“My name is Bruce Banner,” he whispers. His throat aches more from the use of his voice than from his need for more blood to coat it. He has two more days before he’ll need to feed again. “I was born on December eighteenth, nineteen-eighteen. It’s now September fourteenth, two-thousand and ten. I’m almost ninety-two years old.” He glances down at his feet. “I stole these shoes.” He knocks his toes together. “And they don’t even fit properly.”

Above, the sky is a vibrant, pleasant blue, streaked with clouds that pass by at a steady pace from the gentle wind. Fifty-some odd miles away, there’s yellow police tape blocking off an alley that’s undoubtedly still coated in hours-dead blood.

“My name is Bruce Banner,” he repeats on a sigh, softer still. “And I can’t die.”

 

* * *

 

 

_Blood made his stomach churn._

_It made his diaphragm spasm in a viciously desperate attempt to purge it from his system; the pain of it brought him to his knees, made him slam his head against the dirt of the ground to give himself another source of pain to focus on._

_Blood made him **salivate.**_

_“You’re a monster.” His father used to hiss those words to him every night before he fell asleep, sometimes nasty and condemning – most of the time like it was a fact._

_He chewed at the dirt that he shoved his face into, sobbing as the bits of it coated his tongue and clogged his throat, his mouth already wet and dripping and in pain for more. His mother used to argue with his father about it, used to reassure Bruce that he was perfect, that he was beautiful, that he was her angel._

_But he had read the books, knew the folklore – knew exactly what he was. His father would feel justification, if Bruce went to him now._

_His mother would **hate** him._

_For the first time, he was glad she wasn’t alive._

_Reports claimed that, over in Europe, Captain America was a good man, saving the world._

_All Bruce wanted to do was make it bleed._

 

* * *

 

 

He recognizes the introduction of December by the glow of Christmas lights on the freshly fallen snow.

December is a good month. Generosity means that, if he sits on a sidewalk against a building for long enough, someone is bound to cover him with a jacket thick enough to fight off the miserable chill of the approaching winter season. Christmas means that, if he keeps to the shadows and doesn’t let himself be seen, he can look in on open windows and see excited children gazing anxiously at decorated Christmas Trees, families who get along smiling and joking with each other over a big dinner.

Christmas – the approach of Christmas – with its financial burdens and familial happiness that so many don’t have, means that he doesn’t have to stalk, so much as wait for a numb, inwardly cold body to stumble into his arms. They always do.

(He likes the people that seek him out more than he likes the ones he’s learned to find)

The coat that had been draped over him late last night in the next city over is a deep, dark green, a little big in an intentional way, smelling freshly of a department store – new. It allows him to draw into himself, to shove his hands into his pockets and hunch his shoulders up enough to look like he’s trying to fight off the world just enough to stand, but the color is just different enough to let him be seen, for the right eyes to focus and be drawn in.

She has brown hair and sunken green eyes, a body that’s too short and too thin but dangerous for her because it’s female. She’s stumbling along the sidewalk as if she’s walking in a dream, but when she sees him through a casual flick of her gaze, her feet automatically move toward him. His face twitches into a welcoming, practiced old smile, and something small and useless flickers along his spine as she returns it, instinctively reaching out for the hand he hasn’t even extended.

Her scream, when he bites, is only from the pain, and it’s breathy, almost like a whine. In his arms she isn’t horrified, she doesn’t fight – if anything she pushes closer, as if the heat of his new coat can stave off the rush of cold she gets from the blood loss. They all do it – the people who come to him. Her blood tastes like his memory of honey, a little too thin but ready for his mouth. He used to feel so damn guilty for taking the time to savor these ones, for so selfishly taking from the people who clearly only wanted release.

Sixty-seven years teaches you how to appreciate going slow every once in a while.

When she goes limp in his arms, it’s relaxed, almost like she’s trying to give him as much of what’s left of her life as she can. Her fingers loosen in their grip of his green coat from anxious (as if he would have dropped her before he’d been done) to trusting, taking comfort in his presence, and he’s feeling the edges of fullness before her blood begins to sour against his tongue.

Right before he lets her go (lets any of them go), she sighs against his shoulder, and it sounds like a _thank you._

(She’s young, less than thirty, maybe even younger than his own physical age. Unremarkable to look at, her own clothing worn down – without family, probably, or at least without a closeness to them; another that this city won’t care about. He doesn’t just drop her – the buzz from her blood is pleasant under his skin, edging off the ever-present hunger and the cynicism that comes with it – instead slowly lowers her down into the snow, head tilted to the sky, watching as what’s left of her blood slowly begins to seep into the soiled white powder. After a second, he unbuttons the coat, and drapes it over her like a blanket. The cold is harsh, but she’d come to him, she’d tasted like honey, and she’d liked the coat. It had probably been a long time since someone had given her something she’d liked. He uses a handful of the snow to clean off his mouth)

No one notices as he exits the alley for the sidewalk – no one thinks to look. Men go down them, men come out of them. It’s not a shock – it’s another thing that hasn’t changed.

Two blocks down, the buzz from her blood is still going strong – Bruce smiles softly at a little boy who bumps into his leg, and the expression pulls strangely at the muscles in his face.

 

* * *

 

 

_There was one time where Bruce crossed the line he’d made for himself._

_It wasn’t premeditated – not consciously. He fed just the day before. His feet just … lead him to that house._

_His father’s fucking house._

_His mother had had brown eyes. Bruce had brown eyes – he could lie to the world and say that he had his mother’s eyes._

_His father, when he opened the door to the knocking that Bruce didn’t remember doing, had brown eyes, too._

_“You,” his father sneered, reaching out as though it were just fact that he still owned Bruce._

 

 

 

_It went a little fuzzy after that._

 

 

 

_Staticy, like a radio not quite tuned to the right signal._

 

 

 

_Chopped up screaming, too much tearing, too much blood that was much too bitter, the sensation of being too hot, **too hot-**_

 

 

 

 

_And then he woke up, already standing. And very much not in his father’s house._

 

 

_Nineteen-forty-three had turned into nineteen-forty-four without his knowledge, and he had gotten from Ohio to New York without knowing how, without remembering the steps. Papers claimed that, across the ocean, Captain America was dead, killed in action during a final heroic act that had saved the entire country._

_Bruce’s throat was raw, and for the first time in a long time, he couldn’t feel hunger on his tongue._

_He couldn’t feel anything._

 

* * *

 

 

Manhattan is as beautiful now as it had been decades ago.

Which is to say, not at all.

Bruce has hated Manhattan for longer than sixty-seven years.

Oh, it’s festive as hell – somewhere closer to the middle, the Rockefeller Christmas Tree is lit up like a beacon, and crowds are gathered for Christmas-themed ice skating. Hotels are adorned with beautiful white lights, their own too-large Christmas Trees, holiday decorations that are over-the-top but still socially acceptable. Tourists crowd around him, brushing against him as if he’s nothing in their eagerness to see the sights, and (his gums ache) it hurts. Blatant disregard that ironically includes him in their pack – it’s intoxicating, being touched without holding, human warmth without blood.

He’s hungry, he’s on a Third Day without having fed, but when the throng of people turns toward midtown, he finds himself following, falling into their good cheer and the burst of lights that only grows brighter and brighter with every step.

_‘It’s not good to pretend,’_ he thinks to himself; sees a little boy and a little girl who are clutching tightly at each other’s hands, trailing after what are presumably their parents. Feet away, an older woman is holding onto the elbow of a younger man, her eyes darting rapidly between what’s in front of her and down to her own feet. Gales of genuinely cheerful laughter erupt behind him – this is a good place, with good people – pretending … but he swallows, and stays with them. _‘Pushing my way out will only cause agitation in this crowd.’_

It’s almost too much – the man on the other side of him is on his phone, his tone angry, and Bruce has to run his tongue along the edges of his teeth, massaging the tops, to keep himself under control. He would not bury any of these people, craft them crosses of wood to mark their resting, but the image of standing in a mass of broken, soured-blood corpses, his feet sticking to the ground with their smell suffocating the breaths he still takes-

_‘My name is Bruce Banner. I am twenty-five years old. There is snow on the ground, and tomorrow morning is Christmas. After that comes the dead of winter, and then another spring, and then another summer, and then another fall, and then, again, another winter. I am Bruce Banner. I am ninety-one years old. No, tomorrow morning is Christmas, fuck, I’m ninety-two.’_

The crowd breaks apart a block from the encompassing light of the infamous Christmas Tree, splitting away from him like he’s Moses set to cross the Sea, and his brain falls mercifully silent even as his jaws still throb.

And then Bruce sees him.

He’s slight, almost easily missed with his dark hair and matching dark coat that he’s trying so valiantly to hide away into, arguably the same height as Bruce himself. A man who looks out of place amongst the gleeful gathering, standing alone and unacknowledged in a way even Bruce naturally can’t even manage. He recognizes the body language immediately, and twists his direction to move toward him.

Bruce is almost to him when brown eyes, the right one framed by a vivid purple-red bruise, reach up to him.

 

* * *

 

 

_(He stood under the sun for two days. His skin didn’t even adopt a pink hue)_

_(He killed a woman, too sick and frail to fight him off, before he drank from her. It tasted like old coffee spiked with piss, burned like gasoline as it went down his throat, and not even a day later, he was starving again)_

_(He almost fed and killed a young man for beating on another for being inverted, but he couldn’t. It seemed too close to crossing the line again, killing for the sake of murder over feeding. He called for an ambulance after, though, but … he didn’t stick around. It was haunting, not knowing if the other man was alive or not, if Bruce had at least managed to call in time or not)_

_(A man in Montgomery begged for his life, pleading for his infant son – Bruce’s teeth had already been in his neck. They’d both cried. He was the last person Bruce had buried)_

_(Captain America had been a good man, but Bruce was a monster)_

_(Five times, he tried feeding just enough – just enough to stave off the hunger – but he always waited too long to even hope to control it, or bit too far, or found the ones who gave in too easily. They all died on the ground, bled out far before he would have normally stopped feeding, suffered far more than they needed to in his attempt at mercy)_

_(At some point, he starts thinking ‘them’ and ‘me’. Human. And Bruce)_

 

* * *

 

 

“I’m Tony,” the man says as Bruce backs him carefully up against the wall of an alley that’s far enough way to be ignored in favor of the delightful Christmas Tree.

The words make him hesitate – no one’s ever given him a name before.

But the man (young, a boy, really, twenty at most) is watching him with eyes that swirl between the normal accepting expression and a wariness that matches the bruise around his eye. His shoulders are slumped, heavy with the weight of the world, but he’s already inching closer to Bruce to burrow in, like his own coat isn’t nearly as warm as the musty old brown one Bruce is sporting. Hesitation causes tension, and tonight Bruce just wants ease. Simplicity.

“Hi, Tony,” he whispers gravelly as his fingers gently unbutton the top of the man’s coat, peeling the collar away enough to expose his neck. There’s no real snow pile in this alley, no place Bruce will be able to cushion him, but he’s already wearing a coat – Bruce can put his down and cover Tony with his own. It’ll be enough. He might even fall asleep before he actually dies, curled up in the warmth.

There’s an old, almost faded bruise that spans a line across Tony’s collarbone, below where Bruce bites, but even on Tony’s olive skin it’s not easily overlooked. He knows marks like that, the memories still goddamn fresh in his mind despite the time – a black eye is one thing. He carefully, almost without meaning to, runs his fingers lightly over what’s left of the bruise.

Tony whimpers, head dropping, and Bruce can feel him shake a little.

“No, no.” It hurts to talk, but watching Tony oddly hurts _more._ He’s doing things differently than anyone has done with Bruce, regarding him as more of a person than an angel or demon of death, and it’s painfully obvious that he’s warring with himself in moving closer and pulling back – an echo of terror that’s not even aimed at him, fear of someone discovering the truth, and what the fallout of that can be. He pulls his fingers away from the bruise, continues to peel the collar back instead until there’s enough room for his mouth. “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again, I’m sorry. Come here. Tony, it’s okay. Come here.”

Bruce runs his fingers lightly down Tony’s spine, comforting.

Tony darts straight into his chest, just barely fitting his forehead into the crevice of Bruce’s own neck.

_‘Fuck,’_ he thinks as the human continues to shake in his grip; he doesn’t let up his soothing caress. His mouth salivates at the closeness of a living vein. _‘Fuck. Sorry, Tony. I’m sorry.’_

Taking in a huff of the damp warmth of Tony’s skin, Bruce closes his eyes and bites, his teeth snagging and ripping it open.

Tony jerks in his arms, letting out a heavy gasp that’s neither a scream nor a sigh, but Bruce is already too far gone to note it.

The blood is _phenomenal._

His mouth is flooded with the texture of thick water, his tongue greeted by a rich, distinctive taste he doesn’t recognize, and an aftertaste that is almost … metallic. It sinks down his throat like the comfort of a tall glass of milk that his mother had used to bring to him every Saturday night as a treat. He swallows once – and then swallows almost immediately again. He wants to savor it, but his body is suddenly greedy for it, and he’s swallowing _again_ , making a noise he’s never done before.

Against him, Tony jerks again, hand tugging on his coat.

He swallows. This isn’t honey. This is beyond pleasant. This is something else entirely. _He swallows._

“…St-op,” grumbled sluggishly into his throat.

He sucks in another mouthful.

Tony jerks _again, trying to pull away_ – Bruce _growls_ , a nauseating surge of panic and possessiveness in his chest. The blood begins to taste different, more like the honey that it should, a thicker undertaste of just the plain copper-

And then something humanly blunt but still incredibly sharp bites into his own neck.

 

* * *

 

 

_(_ _The first time he let someone fall from his grip and die where they landed, his stomach was full and his mouth tasted like ash. They writhed and twitched and bled out on the shattered glass and trash that made up the alley, and he walked away. Just … just needed to get away)_

_(He found out a man that he drank from had killed his wife and gotten let off on an insanity plea that was clearly false. It wasn’t crossing the line – he hadn’t known beforehand – but … God, it felt good)_

_(He looked in a mirror ten years in, and realized he hadn’t aged a day)_

_(Three people in Los Angeles fought him, screamed so loud that if the traffic was thinner, they’d be discovered. But LA is large, and self-absorbed – he could feed from and leave behind the bodies of the entire poorer population and no one would really care)_

_(If he tried to starve himself, he got twitchy, went so far as to reach out for anyone who was close enough to bite. There had to be a safe, effective way to die)_

_(Forty years later, he dared to visit his mother’s grave. His father was buried right beside her)_

_(There was no space for Bruce)_

 

* * *

 

 

In absolute shock, Bruce’s jaw unlatches from Tony’s neck, and he stumbles as he’s pushed backwards, his eyes immediately focusing on the other man, who is shoving himself up against the wall as much as he can, his hand wrapped around his neck.

Brown eyes are wide, _accusing_ , lips twitching to form what are probably either words of rage or a scream that will catch even the attention of the excitement-intoxicated tourists.

No. _No no no no._ He doesn’t _want_ to kill Tony –

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?” Tony demands, and surprisingly, the words are whispered. Bruce reaches out (for what, he doesn’t know), but the human trips to the side, frown deepening. “Oh my God, when a normal human like me offers to help a vampire like you out, you don’t take it for granted, buddy!”

Bruce’s breath kicks in his chest.

_“What?”_ He thinks he says it – it _feels_ like his says it, the odd tingling in his throat from speaking almost muted by the furious pounding in his mouth.

“I have had a really fucking _shitty day_ , if you cannot tell-.” Tony waves pointedly at his black eye, ignoring the question (if he’s actually spoken it). “-and then I saw you, and I thought, ‘wow, a mutually beneficial arrangement!’ and then you try and fucking kill me. _Kill. Me._ Completely **_willing_** participant who has _obviously had a not very good day._ Isn’t there a rule against that or something? Do you not know how to vampire properly? God.” Tony shifts his hand, winces, and immediately slaps it back over the bite. “Am I bleeding out? Did you rip open an artery? Am I _dying?_ ”

Something small and wet and cold smacks cruelly against his eye – it’s starting to snow.

“I-no. No, you’re not dying. I didn’t, I don’t think.” The ache in his mouth is starting to fade, no reaching tendrils hoping for one last drop, or another neck to bite. It’s strange, it’s _wrong,_ it’s _exhilarating._ Bruce feels like the world is moving under his feet. “Vampire … properly?”

Tony makes a face (a _face_ , as if Bruce isn’t some monster from Hell that just tried to drink his life force from his body, just another human joking around). “Yeah, you’re supposed to say _thank you_ before you bite me, take a few mouthfuls, and move on for a week until some other person comes up with an offer-.”

“A _week?”_

He hasn’t talked this much to another person since nineteen-fifty-three, and all it had been then were profusely repeated apologies given to a slowly dying man. A week? Thank you? He’s never heard the word _vampire_ spoken with such truth before. Like it’s a fact instead of fiction.

“And _I’m_ supposed to ride the endorphins of giving the offering, and walk away from the encounter feeling more than a lot better than I did to start, that’s what I read. And I really needed that today. Fuck, what are you, a newbie?” He watches as Tony’s eyes widen. “Wait, _are_ you new? Did someone turn you and just walk off? How old are you?”

The world tilts a little too far, and Bruce falls back. The ground is cold and steadily growing wet from the increasing fall of the snow.

_(Large, gentle hands.)_

“… Buddy? Shit.”

_(“Oh my God, oh my God, I- Jesus Christ. What did I-? I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-!”)_

“Hey.”

Warmth traces along his ridge of his cheekbone. He blinks – Tony’s knelt in front of him, still covering his neck, but he’s not making the face anymore (what the hell). His mouth doesn’t burn even though his mind knows that, under his hand, Tony’s bite is still bleeding. But the touch … he’s drunk again. No one touches…

“I didn’t break you, did I big guy?” It’s asked carefully. Tony’s eyes, lacking in the red ring that always surrounds Bruce’s own, really are intelligent. Bruce feels like an equation. “Did you go too long without feeding, or something? Is that what happened?”

_‘How do you know about me?’_ His tongue wants to ask the question. The last person who had used the word _vampire_ had been a homeless man of Catholic faith who’d fought and then had just wanted to peacefully go (monster). _‘What books? Where did you read that?’_

“Ninety-two,” he spits out on a breath, none of the things that he’s wanted to say because he doesn’t know how to say them. The human’s head cocks slightly to the opposite side of the wound.

“What’s ninety-two?”

_(Large, gentle hands. “Oh my God, oh my God, I- Jesus Christ)_

“My name is Bruce Banner,” he whispers. He doesn’t feel a lick of hunger and Tony’s still touching him, hand on his shoulder now instead of his face. “I was born on December eighteenth, nineteen-eighteen. It’s now Decem- December twenty-fourth, two-thousand and ten. I’m ninety-two years old. I’m ninety-two years old. In sixty-seven years, I’ve – I’ve killed.” He’s killed thousands of people, and Tony is still standing, alive, and Bruce isn’t hungry.

The hand on his shoulder abruptly clenches. It’s more grounding than the people from the crowd.

“Nineteen-eighteen. Sixty-seven years …” Tony’s muttering, and amazingly, his hand travels from Bruce’s shoulder to his neck – skin to skin without the use of blood or the need to drink, right over the spot where Tony had bit. The world must be moving again, because he feels like he’s shaking. “I think … wow, this is so a me thing to do, Pepper’s going to be thrilled, but I think you need to come with me.”

_(I’m sorry)_

 

* * *

 

 

_He was standing in an alley in the middle the day, surrounded by Detroit’s anger and resentment of the nation’s neglect._

_It was nineteen ninety-four, and the ground was littered with shards of glass, tossed out Coke bottles and Pepsi cans, fast food trash and take-out containers, and various twisted pieces of scrap metal that had once served purposes no longer discernable._

_Bruce didn’t feel like he was standing on the ground, he didn’t feel like the Earth was moving underneath him, he didn’t feel the weight of his body or the constriction of being confined to it. It was like he was floating without flying, like he didn’t really exist, like he was just visiting this place the way someone his age ought to be – as an envious ghost from Hell._

_People walked past the entrance to the alley, their heads either low or high, their thoughts wrapped up in their lives, in the problems they, as mankind, had to deal with. He wasn’t a man anymore, the problems of humans were not his problems. They lived now to fix them, they were born from others in hopes of being able to fix them – children were taught in schools as the country’s investment in educating the newer populations in how to fix them. It was a terrible way to live, a stupid reason to be born into existence – having no true motivation or purpose of your own._

_But at least it was a purpose. Humans had a purpose to their lives._

_The only thing Bruce was living for, was to kill, survive, and find a way to die._

_He was tired._

_The metal piece in his hand was long, jagged – maybe it had belonged on the back of someone’s car once, maybe it had been brought to the city with the intention of becoming part of a building, only to be cast aside like the rest of the potentially good things humans seemed to not want to touch anymore._

_‘Maybe I would have been that way,’ he thought, bringing the piece closer to his eyes. It gleamed in the sun, ironically beautiful despite its label, the silver glinting. There were specks of red scraped across it – paint from another piece, perhaps. Maybe even its actual color. ‘Maybe I would have given up all of this, too. If I’d had it.’_

_It didn’t matter._

_He blinked at the piece._

_‘Eh, what the hell. Why not?’_

_He brought the sharp piece to the side of his neck, jabbed it in-_

_and dragged it forward._

 

* * *

 

 

“I tried to kill you.”

Tony’s arm is looped around his waist (and in result, Bruce has his around Tony’s), holding him so tightly that Bruce isn’t exactly sure who is really keeping who standing. The man (“I’m twenty-one, calm down.”) has positioned himself so that his injury, roughly covered by a few strips of Bruce’s shirt, is on the far side so that the blood now sluggishly flowing won’t be a temptation – not that there will be.

Bruce still isn’t hungry.

“You needed to feed, and you didn’t, uh, know.” Tony gives him a little squeeze, directing both of them around a group of people who won’t move out of the way. “So we’re cool. Just don’t do it again. It’s rude. Or at least ask first. I mean, I’ll probably still say no, but-.”

“I tried to _kill you_ ,” Bruce repeats earnestly. This human – this goddamned intoxicating Tony – seems to know a hell of a lot more about what Bruce is than Bruce has been able to figure out in almost seven decades, but he seems to be intentionally ignorant of the fact that Bruce still is, and will always be, a monster.

(Tony is still alive, and Bruce has had his fill. Tony is still alive, but so many others – all of the others – are dead. He’s left them in alley ways, some on their backs and some on their sides and some face down – he’s left them to die in the coldness of blood loss and the realization that they would not be going home. He’s aided _so many_ in leaving this planet, but … endorphins? What if they hadn’t really wanted to leave? What if they were just in a rough spot, and he’d taken advantage?)

“We covered that already.” God, is the guy _whining?_

“You’re taking me to your house,” Bruce snaps back. But he doesn’t move away or let go. “After what I did to you, you’re bringing me to your damned house.”

(He could have saved that woman, back in September. Or at the very least, he could have shot her before he’d taken off with her gun and wasted the bullets on his one-hundred and eighty-third attempt to die. He hadn’t needed to leave her there, to die that way. Would it have counted as murder, really? Or was that his monster talking? Maybe he’d wanted her to die slowly – maybe he’d always wanted that. Maybe what had been done to him had only made him worse than what he’d already been – had made it so that he could let it out)

“You can’t be any worse than Obie, that’s for fucking sure,” Tony mutters so lowly that Bruce only catches half of it. “At least I know what you’re capable of, and how to be prepared. Seriously, big guy, chill out. It’ll be fine. You can come over, read the old man’s journals-.”

“Journals?” _‘Is that where you read it? Is that how you know? Are there journals about me?’_

Tony bites his lip as he steers them toward a more upscale street. “Let’s just say that nineteen-forty-three was a very fucking interesting year for a lot of people. Hey, you won’t chew on the driver if we get a cab here, will you? I’m tired, and you’re damn heavy.”

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> My (belated!) birthday gift to ChibiYoda. _Way_ back in January I randomly asked about either vampire Bruce or werewolf Bruce, and she mentioned wanting vampire Bruce, so! Happy belated birthday! Hope you like it :)


End file.
